How do you think an MLB team would do if it strictly awarded playing time to players who were currently hot? Consider having an owner with unlimited funds. In the White Sox case, Dunn would be gone because he's not performing. Forget about how much he's paid. Forget about trying to get a good trade value. Money doesn't matter. You always have your best performing players on the field, no matter what their name is and no matter what their salary is.
This is all theoretical, but I think we could have an honest conversation about something like this. How would it affect team morale? How would it affect ability to draw free agents in years to come etc?

How could this work? There are a limited number of players who can perform at the ML level, so options are already limited. If players are not 'hot' as you say what do you do with them? Bench them, cut them, send them down to the minors? You can't send everyone down so it's either benching or cutting, and I would guess it would have to be cutting the player since the roster can only have, what, 25 players? What criteria wouold be used to determine if a player is hot or not, and are you talking only offense in this scenario? What if a player is average at the plate but a stud defensively?

This sounds like a nightmare. Who would want to play for an organization that is going to release you or send you down to AAA if you happen to have a couple bad weeks? The team would also need to have a surplus of talent in the minors just waiting to be called up in case a player wasn't performing and I don't know of a single team that has a farm system like that.

I don't think it's likely an experiment like this could last longer than a year or even a half a year. It would be interesting to see some team try this once they see things going South in the middle of a season.
In the Sox case, for example, Adam Dunn is truly only playing right now because of money. Most definitely you could trade him for somebody who would hit better than .100. If you didn't care about money at all, some other team would take the chance because Dunn has a big upside and it's all reward with no risk for them. On our side of the trade, we'd instantly have someone in the lineup with increased production. Now working this theory out for multiple players would be interesting and very tough to sustain, but even with one player, this could make a difference.

I don't think it's likely an experiment like this could last longer than a year or even a half a year. It would be interesting to see some team try this once they see things going South in the middle of a season.
In the Sox case, for example, Adam Dunn is truly only playing right now because of money. Most definitely you could trade him for somebody who would hit better than .100. If you didn't care about money at all, some other team would take the chance because Dunn has a big upside and it's all reward with no risk for them. On our side of the trade, we'd instantly have someone in the lineup with increased production. Now working this theory out for multiple players would be interesting and very tough to sustain, but even with one player, this could make a difference.

I'm not trying to be mean, but this makes zero sense. In a hypothetical world where salaries are not relevant, why would I trade for a player who is literally the worst player in MLB and give you a player who is better?

That's how bad Dunn is- you can't even trade him to a pretend team who doesn't have to pay salaries.

I'm not trying to be mean, but this makes zero sense. In a hypothetical world where salaries are not relevant, why would I trade for a player who is literally the worst player in MLB and give you a player who is better?

That's how bad Dunn is- you can't even trade him to a pretend team who doesn't have to pay salaries.

I'm not talking about salaries meaning nothing across the league. I'm thinking about one owner, our owner, just not giving a crap about getting some kind of value for Dunn, but instead, getting a player that would actually perform. I guess I got the idea from the thread about Ventura having the power to bench Dunn. Would an owner have the guts to disregard money for maybe a half a season and just play players who are actually performing? As for another team taking Dunn, if he was cheap enough any team would take him in a second. Like I said, it's very little risk and possibility of a big upside. That's the point I'm trying to make. He's still here because of what he used to do and how much money he makes. If a rookie making the minimum was batting .100, he'd probably be gone and never make it back to the majors.